Jan 20 - Dehli Threatens Jail Time for Plastic Bag Possession
Frustrated that its ban on plastic bags was being ignored, officials in the Indian capital of Dehli have ratcheted up the law, saying that violators may eventually face jail time. Randeep Ramesh writes in the British newspaper The Guardian that plastic bag pollution has been a byproduct of rapid development in India:
Delhi has been quietly filling up with plastic bags in recent years as the economy boomed and western-style shopping malls sprang up in the city. There are no reliable figures for bag use but environmentalists say more than 10m a day are used in the capital every day. Not only are the streets littered with them, but polythene takes hundreds of years to decompose and creates demand for oil, which is used to make plastics.
CAW and Plastic Bags: